Family budgeting often runs into difficulties. The hardest part is often not organizing all family members, but finding an easy and effortless way to do household bookkeeping.
It is necessary
Personal computer (laptop, tablet), MS Excel program, pen, notebook, calculator
Instructions
Step 1
One of the easiest ways to keep a family budget is to simply write down all expenses in a notebook. You need to get into the habit of collecting in a certain place all the receipts that have accumulated during the day and counting the expenses. Divide your notebook into columns: food, transportation, rent or utility bills, clothing, household goods, entertainment, and so on (you can choose just a few areas that spend the most money).
Step 2
A more advanced way, with the ability to automatically calculate expenses, is to create a document in Microsoft Excel. There you can create a table with the name of spending, as well as write down the automatic summation formulas in the cells. This way you will see the total amount at a glance, without having to calculate it with a calculator. For convenience, you can create such a table in the Google Docs service, and then each of the family members will be able to add their expenses from remote access.
Step 3
At the moment, there are a large number of programs on the Internet that allow you to conduct home accounting completely automatically, not only taking into account spending, but also taking into account incoming funds. Such programs can calculate future spending, identify your "weak points", suggest on what and where you can save. As a rule, such programs are very inexpensive, or are shareware (the test version is given for 30 days). The most common programs include Home Bookkeeping, Home Finance, Family 10, Family Budget, and so on. Almost all of them are in the form of applications on Android and iOS and they can even be installed on your phone.
Step 4
Budgeting is already a much more complex activity. The easiest way is to plan your budget for the next month. It is necessary to clearly separate the costs into mandatory and optional. In the event that mandatory expenditures exceed the usual rate, you can identify in the column of optional expenditures “loopholes” that will help the budget to stay “afloat”. An even higher stage is planning expenses and income for the next year. On the one hand, it seems rather complicated, but on the other hand, it will allow you to immediately draw up a list of necessary actions to keep your budget in balance.
